BEING JOHN MALKOVICH
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Paydirt! A really, really off-the-
wall fantasy that provides just one strange idea or
one weird insight after another. An office worker
discovers his file cabinet hides a doorway into the
head of John Malkovich so that fifteen minutes at a
time the visitor can be the famous actor.
Different people are affected differently and the
implications of the premise are used in multiple
comic ways. Rating: 9 (0 to 10), +3 (-4 to +4)
BEING JOHN MALKOVICH is an audacious new comedy that starts strange, keeps getting stranger, then hits an idea so weird that it takes the rest of the film to explore only some of the many ramifications. "Nobody's looking for a puppeteer in today's wintry economic climate," complains Craig Schwartz (played John Cusak) an out-of-work puppeteer to his wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz). Craig has been reduced to street performances of Heloise and Abelard for change, and even that does not work for him. Lotte looks and dresses and generally lives like a hippie. She works in a pet store and has turned the Schwartz's modest apartment into a menagerie of distressed animals. In his desperate efforts to find work Craig takes a job as a filing clerk on the seven and a half floor of an office building. The floor only about five feet high was created to provide equal access for midgets. Craig reluctantly settles into his job and starts having designs on the office beauty, a leggy clerk named Maxine (Catherine Keener). When Maxine finds out Craig is a puppeteer his attentions are only a little less welcome than the strep throat.
Then Craig discovers that there is a little doorway hidden behind an office file cabinet. Behind it lies a dark, damp, gratuitously Freudian tunnel that drops the trespasser into the mind and body of John Malkovich (played by John Malkovich). For fifteen minutes the visitor sees what Malkovich sees, hears what Malkovich hears, and feels what Malkovich feels. Then the visitor is gently dropped from thin air to the ground next to the New Jersey Turnpike. For Craig the strange phenomenon is his inroad to win the attentions of Maxine. Maxine sees the Malkovich tunnel as a giant moneymaking opportunity. When Lotte tries the tunnel she discovers that she likes to be Malkovich to ... well that would be telling.
Charlie Kaufman's script never slows down and never leaves a scene with the expected. And only toward the end is the plot so convoluted that it stops making sense. Not all the story possibilities are used, but Kaufman does carry the premise and its ramifications to some strange extremes. Different people get different benefits from the Malkovich ride. Some visitors want to try just being in another body; some want a taste of the Malkovich life style. Malkovich's finely appointed, but sterile and lifeless apartment is a stark contrast to Craig's cluttered low-rent apartment teeming with animals and life. Other people want to share the actor's sex life.
John Cusak seems to have a taste for intelligent humor and takes to his role with gusto. For some reason he looks as seedy as he has ever looked on the screen. Cameron Diaz, who has been alluring in most of her other films here is almost unrecognizably frumpy in a mop of flyaway hair. They are both made as unglamorous as possible to define their rank in society and to contrast with Catherine Keener, one of the beautiful people who can have a lover like Malkovich for the asking. And the old doctor with a voice like Orson Bean really is played by Orson Bean.
At last something new and original in a movie. This is a film as fresh and entertaining as was the story ALICE IN WONDERLAND when it was new. It would be nice if following the lead of BEING JOHN MALKOVICH filmmakers would realize that you could start with some really crazy premise, possibly fantasy, and just follow it to wherever it leads. I rate BEING JOHN MALKOVICH a 9 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Maybe someone who knows more about the state of marionette techniques than I do. Can a good puppeteer really make a marionette do a somersault and not get the strings tangled up. Questions unanswered: Is there a separate in-house documentary about the seventh floor? After all we know from the outside of the building that the floors started out all the same height, so they must have divided the seventh floor. I was willing to suspend my disbelief for that; I was even willing to suspend my disbelief on the major premises of the film. But one thing is minor premise goes a little too far. I find it very difficult to believe that without benefit of a magical tunnel anybody could get from an office building in Manhattan to the New Jersey Turnpike in only fifteen minutes.
When Malkovich enters the tunnel the result is a really bizarre scene borrowed from a "Twilight Zone" episode, but it is totally unsatisfying as what would be seen. I was expecting to see an ever- diminishing tunnel or repetitions, not unlike the mirror scene in CITIZEN KANE. But my question is what did the Japanese tourist who was in the tunnel with him see. I assume from the script that Malkovich really has never played a jewel thief. However the reference to him playing someone mentally retarded was probably to his performance as Lenny in John Steinbeck's OF MICE AND MEN (1992).
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
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